À la carte

À la carte is a common word or phrase that everyone hears when they order food or whatever in a restaurant or even in hawker centres nowadays. Well, it means a reference to a menu of items priced and ordered separately. It also means to designate an option to choose, at no extra charge, a side dish to accompany a main course item. The origins of the phrase is actually quite simple. The phrase was adopted into English in 1826, predating by a decade the common use of the French language loanword "menu". However the actual meaning of À la carte in French is actually "according to the menu". Now, we all know that À la carte is kind of weird as how does "according to the menu" got changed to the meanings above.